How to organise a workshop: the step-by-step plan from offer to full group

What does organising a workshop involve?

Organising a workshop means arranging everything around a session in which attendees get to work themselves: deciding what the workshop needs to deliver, choosing the format and the price, recruiting attendees, making sure they come, giving the workshop and following up with attendees afterwards.

For a training provider or coach, a workshop is rarely the end point. It’s the tasting. The place where someone feels what it’s like to work with you, and decides whether they want to carry on. In a programme, a coaching package or an in-house programme.

That’s exactly where it often leaks. We call it the room, you can also say funnel:

This step-by-step plan fixes both. It follows our Sold-Out Recipe: first the Dough (your offer), then the Rise (filling the group), then the Oven (making sure people come) and then the Counter (selling and following up).

How to organise a workshop in 8 steps

1. Decide what comes after the workshop

Most workshops start with a subject the trainer likes talking about. Then comes a title, a programme, a room. And at the end, a pile of leaflets about the full programme.

Turn it around. First decide what someone can buy afterwards. For a training provider that’s often the full programme or the next open course. For a coach, an intake for a coaching package. For a firm that works in-house: a conversation with the HR manager or the team leader who took part.

Can you say in two sentences what that follow-on is, who it’s for and what it delivers? Only then do you know which workshop is the logical first bite of it. Not the whole programme in miniature, but the piece that lets people taste how the rest tastes.

2. Choose the format

Three choices, and they’re connected:

• Open or in-house. An open workshop you fill with individual attendees from different organisations. An in-house workshop you give at one organisation. Open is your shop window, in-house is often already a sale.
• In person or online. In person gives more contact and more energy in the group. Online makes it easier to come, but takes more work to get people really taking part.
• Free or paid. If the workshop is the tasting for your programme, free or low-priced can work. If the workshop itself is your product, you price it on what attendees get out of it. In doubt? Then the question isn’t “what do others charge?”, but “what does this workshop need to do?”.

A workshop is not a webinar. In a webinar, people mainly watch you. In a workshop, they do something themselves. That means a smaller group, exercises that really land, and a programme in which you talk less than you’d like.

3. Choose your group and your date

“For anyone who wants to develop themselves” is not a group. That’s a room full of people who mainly found it interesting.

Pick one type of attendee. Managers who’ve just been given a team. HR advisers struggling with absenteeism. Independent coaches who want to run their first group. The sharper the group, the easier the title, the recruiting and the offer at the end.

Plan well ahead. A workshop you announce a week beforehand fills with people who already know you. Pick a moment that suits your attendee, not your own diary. And look at your own previous workshops: which days and times went best? Your own numbers say more than any average.

4. Write the title and the sign-up page

The title does one thing: make the right people think “this is about me”. Name the problem in their words, and the outcome they want. Not the name of your method.

A good sign-up page for a workshop has:

1. A promise in one sentence: what can someone do afterwards that they can’t do now?
2. Who it’s for, and who it’s not for.
3. What attendees are going to do. Three concrete parts.
4. Who’s giving the workshop, and why that person is entitled to say something about this.
5. Date, time, venue or link, and how many places there are. Only if that number is true.
6. A form that doesn’t ask more than needed. Want to follow up by WhatsApp or phone? Then ask for it here.

5. Recruit attendees: how to promote your workshop

This is the Rise: filling the group. For most trainers and coaches these channels work, preferably together:

• Your own list. Past attendees, newsletter subscribers, people who asked a question before. Often the fastest source.
• LinkedIn. Content about the problem in the weeks before, and personal invitations to the people you really want in the group.
• Outreach. Approaching people who fit your group, even if they don’t know you yet.
• Ads. To fill faster or wider, with the same sharp promise as on your sign-up page.
• Your attendees themselves. Ask whoever signs up whether they want to bring a colleague.

That’s how we did it at KarakterFaculteit, a training provider: a LinkedIn networking strategy, combined with organic social, social advertising and email outreach. The result: two full workshops, and 10% of workshop attendees moved on to a full programme. That case study is on our page about event marketing.

Look at that last line. The full workshops aren’t the proof, the move-on is.

6. Make sure they come

A sign-up is not yet an attendee. Signing up takes a minute, coming takes an afternoon. Especially with a free workshop, the threshold for staying at home is low.

That’s the Oven: warming up. A confirmation with the date in the calendar. A message in between with a question or assignment, so attendees are already thinking about their own situation. And reminders by email and WhatsApp just before the start. How to write those reminders is in the reminder email for your webinar or workshop. Why people stay away in the first place is in how to reduce no-shows.

A trick that works well for workshops: give a small assignment beforehand. Whoever has already prepared something is more likely to show up. They’ve already invested in it.

7. Give the workshop: how to structure the session

This is where the second leak sits. A workshop that only transfers knowledge is a good free training. A workshop that produces move-on has three ingredients in the right ratio:

An example, made up but recognisable. A trainer gives a workshop on having difficult conversations. The attendees practise in pairs, it goes well, the energy is high. At the end: “Thanks everyone, the programme is on our website.”

A second trainer gives the same workshop. After the exercise she talks about an attendee from the previous programme who, after three months, did dare to have the conversation with her director. Then the bridge: “Today you practised one conversation. In the programme we practise all of them, with your own situation.” And one step: whoever wants to, books a short call this week to see whether the programme fits.

Same workshop. Same group. The first gets compliments, the second gets calls.

How to build that structure, with a bridge to your offer, is covered in more detail in Webinar that sells. The recipe is the same, only in a workshop your attendees do more themselves.

8. Follow up and measure

The workshop is over, the flip chart sheets go in the bin. At most training providers, nothing happens for a week after that, apart from an evaluation form.

Follow up within a day. Call or message whoever showed interest. Send everyone a short summary with the same offer as in the room. And give those who didn’t come a second chance, for instance at the next date. Interest is fresh. Wait days and you’re starting from scratch.

Then measure four numbers per workshop:

1. Sign-ups. How many people registered?
2. Attendees. How many actually came?
3. Calls. How many attendees wanted to talk further?
4. Move-on. How many signed up for your programme?

That shows you where you leak. Lots of sign-ups and few attendees? Then it’s in the oven. Lots of attendees and no calls? Then it’s in your offer or your structure. Calls but no move-on? Then it’s at the counter.

Workshop, seminar or webinar: which are you organising?

Whoever wants to organise a seminar is often after the same thing as whoever wants to organise a workshop: getting people together around your field. The difference is in what the audience does.

You choose the format on your follow-on. If you first need to become known in a new market, a seminar or webinar makes sense. If you need people to experience what it’s like to work with you, the workshop wins. The recipe around it stays the same. For a webinar it’s laid out step by step in how to organise a webinar.

The five most expensive mistakes when organising a workshop

More on how we approach this for training providers is on marketing for training providers. Are you a coach? Then look at marketing for coaches.

Want to know where your workshop leaks right now? Take the free leak test: thirteen questions, three minutes. Want to set it up together, we do that in the Sold-Out Session: your offer crystal clear and your structure in the right ratio, in one half-day.

A full workshop is the start. The move-on is the finish.

RK

Rubin Koot · Hoofdbakker

Rubin is the founder of Online Marketing Bakery in Roermond. You take the stage, we fill the room. And we make sure it buys.

[email protected] · More about the bakers

Further reading: How to organise a webinar: the step-by-step plan · Webinar that sells: knowledge, inspiration and offer · How to reduce no-shows · Marketing for training providers · Marketing for coaches · Event marketing agency · Take the free leak test · The Sold-Out Session

How we work: first the offer, then the room. Want to get going with a brief like this? We do that in the Sold-Out Session: your offer and your event structure in one half-day.